Description

Introduction by HUGO ALBERT RENNERT, Ph.D. Professor of Romanic Languages and
Literature, University of Pennsylvania.

"The people who inhabit the northern parts beyond the Rhine and the Danube,
living in a healthy and prolific region, frequently increase to such vast
multitudes that part of them are compelled to abandon their native soil, and
seek a habitation in other countries. The method adopted, when one of these
provinces had to be relieved of its superabundant population, was to divide into
three parts, each containing an equal number of nobles and of people, of rich
and of poor. The third upon whom the lot fell, then went in search of new
abodes, leaving the remaining two-thirds in possession of their native country.

These migrating masses destroyed the Roman empire by the facilities for
settlement which the country offered when the emperors abandoned Rome, the
ancient seat of their dominion, and fixed their residence at Constantinople; for
by this step they exposed the western empire to the rapine of both their
ministers and their enemies, the remoteness of their position preventing them
either from seeing or providing for its necessities. To suffer the overthrow of
such an extensive empire, established by the blood of so many brave and virtuous
men, showed no less folly in the princes themselves than infidelity in their
ministers; for not one irruption alone, but many, contributed to its ruin; and
these barbarians exhibited much ability and perseverance in accomplishing their
object."

- Excerpted from "History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy or
Florentine Histories"